


Taking Comfort

by thegildedmagpie



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Breathplay, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Gondolin, M/M, Multi, Nightmares, Oral Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slavery, Threesome - F/M/M, Vaginal Fingering, Wax Play, kinky coping mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 03:05:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5274128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegildedmagpie/pseuds/thegildedmagpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tuor, Voronwë, and Idril all have traumas to cope with, and they find new ways to love one another by soothing each other's nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taking Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on Tumblr by @magpiescholar responding to a request from @givenclarity, who draws really excellent art, including a Tuor who is most inspiring. I don't think anyone anticipated it getting quite this kinky.
> 
> Background TMI (Tuor/Maeglin/Idril) mention, but Maeglin doesn't actually appear.

When Tuor has nightmares, they're about the past.

Lorgan stands over him sometimes, as he liked to do when Tuor was too overcome to do more than lie on his flayed back and gasp for air that tasted of his own tears. Tuor's master liked to see him brought low, liked to let the hem of his stained robe sweep over the edge of his property's face when Tuor was too far gone to flinch.

Mostly it was silence he commanded of Tuor. When he blasphemed the Valar, when he made his filthy slurs about the elves who had been all the family Tuor knew (or, as it turned out, would ever know), he would look at his slave and smile, thin and self-satisfied, at the place where Tuor held the ale-jug and fumed like an angry stone.

Other times silence was only a companion to _listening_. He'd say, _Listen to me, slave – you are not too much a fool for it! This is an important duty and even you should be able to manage it if you hearken and mind,_ he'd say. Other times the mockery was less about his mind: _Do you suppose anyone even looked for you? What purpose would you have if I didn't give you one? What exactly makes you think you ought to be an_ expensive _whore, the sort that gets requests instead of commands? Don't you realize how much better off you are with me looking after you, my brawny little fool?_

It haunts him sometimes to think that he might have escaped years earlier if he had learned more quickly to act cowed. But that would have been wrong. The knowledge pulses in his breast. Even if there was no one else he could hurt by it, he would have wronged himself.

He wakes from his nightmares doubting this, though.

Then he is not silent, nor is he overpowered. Idril will let him pick her up bodily and arrange her against the headboard so he can bend to apply his tongue to her, urging her to lift her hips to him and calling her _my lady_ between every stroke. In Voronwë's ear he'll whisper, “Let me have you,” and his erstwhile guide, urged on by the brush of lips and stubbled jaw at the point of his ear where all elves seem to wear their greatest sensitivity like an earring, will be rising to his hand before he wakes. Sometimes Tuor calls him _my lord_ , too, even as he tumbles Voronwë onto his back and gestures to Idril to hand him the oil for taking him.

They both know by now what troubles their mortal beloved, and they rarely speak to him when he wakes them to receive his gentle attentions, letting him be the one to own the words they say among themselves in the night.

 

-

 

When Voronwë has nightmares, they're about the present.

He walks in Gondolin as it looks today – he can tell by a few of the statues and the growth of some of the trees that it is so – and he notes this every time as though he's perfectly aware he's dreaming before he suddenly loses track of the fact that it's a dream.

Because water rises in the dream; he'll first notice it as a change in the music of the fountains, listening with a sailor's ear to the echo of Ulmo's voice and how it shifts in tone. The fountains brim like carelessly filled goblets. And the spray of them will turn suddenly salt as the water begins to sheet like crystal over the edges and silently fill the streets, a matching moisture seeping up between white cobblestones to meet the rising tide.

What happens from then varies; sometimes he runs, his steps flagging as the water drags first at his knees, then at his thighs. He feels the hands of those who don't yet know they're drowning begin to cling to the hem of his tunic before he loses his footing and goes under, a rush of bubbles tickling his face as he screams. Sometimes he'll struggle to the top of an outer wall and safety, only to see the faces of the comrades he lost in the shipwreck sweep past him upon Gondolin's dead, carried by the water. Sometimes he thinks he glimpses, presiding over the flood, the savage satisfaction of Ossë.

When he wakes, he pitches out of bed to go to the window and see Gondolin safe above sea level. If he's in bed with his lovers, he'll trample straight over them, leaving sleepy, annoyed confusion in his wake – but the tone of annoyance never stays once they've understood, and Voronwë will find himself taken into Tuor's strong arms, enfolded against the comfort of his downy golden chest.

He knows he's not the only one Idril and Tuor enjoy together. Yet he credits not experience but love, or what lies under love, that unspoken and unspeakable sympathy that makes two people kin of the heart even if they rarely meet, for the efficacy with which they soothe him.

Tuor will take him back to bed and hold him tightly, usually sitting with his back against the headboard and Voronwë back-to-front upon his knees, gently drawing off any nightclothes Voronwë might be wearing and clasping his lover's more slender form against him. Voronwë will feel Tuor coming to attention beneath him as the Man restrains him, smoothing away the memory of little wavelets that greedily lap toward the deck and over his skin, replacing those sensations with the knowledge of large, sword-calloused hands that want nothing more than to touch him.

Then Idril comes back to bed, her golden hair her only garment, her tresses beautifully failing to hide the softnesses that clothe her figure where, when dressed, she only looks delicate. Tuor stiffens further under Voronwë's hips as Idril slips her knees between her husband's thighs and their lover's, pinning Voronwë's legs closed and Tuor's open. Then, fine-fingered hands come to cover Voronwë's nose and mouth.

Idril leans her full weight into her task as Tuor pins his arms, strokes his hair or murmurs soft endearments into the shell of a pointed ear while Voronwë's head is pressed painfully hard back into his muscled shoulder. Their lady bears down expertly, her sex moistening above his pinned legs as he tries to struggle, but they hold him thoroughly and expertly between them.

Idril never yields to his thrashing or flinches from the vibranting hum of pleading noises beneath her palms until Voronwë's eyes come wide open and pleading, letting the tears swim thin over his irises. Then she'll smile – always the same gentle, benevolent smile – and let him gasp for air as he did on the thin, storm-scummy beach at Nevrast, but this time he is not alone on the gritty, untrusted ground; this time he is held safe.

She always waits until he nods wordlessly to her to restore the pressure, sometimes again, sometimes many times again. And when she's ready – when knowing what Voronwë will let her do and long for Tuor to do to him has made her so – she'll slide down onto him, letting his hardness slip into the silken passage of a far more welcome wet. Then her hands will close on his throat until she feels him tighten and rises up, letting him finish in a splash over her white thighs.

 

-

 

When Idril has nightmares, they're about the future.

She is the eldest child, now, of a lineage that ends abruptly above her head – Turgon is the last of Fingolfin's children now and, unless something happens to end the Oath of Fëanor sometime very soon, may be the last of Finwë's grandchildren.

From birth Idril has been the apple of her father's eye, his only child, his only tangible reminder of her mother's life. Turgon's desire to adopt Maeglin, the uncanny shadow to Idril who has been his darling and the light of his life these hundreds of years, did not sway her knowledge that she is the center of the king's heart. She was dismayed but not altogether surprised when Turgon made it clear he would name Maeglin heir – the High King of the Noldor has not been a woman yet, but it's a crown that passes sideways, and if needs must, she will succeed her adoptive sibling as ruler just as Turgon succeeded his brother in blood. Even so, she knew that her father loved her best – how could he do otherwise, when he protected her across the glacier and poured everything he was into her upbringing? And it's because he loves her so, she knows, that she fears him dying as his father and brother and sister have died, 

Sometimes she dreams of going into the private garden off Turgon's sitting room and finding him frozen to death. Sometimes she dreams of the city burning, even though it is a city of stone, and knows that her father's body is burning too. Knows that the fire that licks along the streets as though they were oiled blades is the fire in her father's veins. Sometimes she dreams of going to her father's throne room and seeing the dark ghost of Eöl crouched above the beloved form, the crimson banner of the High King's blood unspooled across the marble floor. The King is dead. Long live the King. The King is dead. Long live the Queen.

Idril is wise enough to interpret her own dreams, and to know that since she has been taught all Turgon knew with a rare dedication, when she fears her father's death she also fears losing herself.

Tuor wakes from nightmares thrashing against invisible bonds, Voronwë scrabbling for air and freedom – and, Idril has cause to know, Maeglin wakes from his in silent, furious tears. Idril always wakes up shivering. Born to the ice, she has never quite purged it from her bones.

Her beautiful husband will fold her in his arms, letting her feel small and well-kept, or wrap her in extra blankets and drape her in furs, making her a warm little packet as Turgon used to do when she came barefoot to his room to complain of nightmares. Sometimes he'll pick her up bodily and carry her to their small hearth, sitting there with her until she can drive away the imaginings of her father fallen.

If Voronwë is with them, it's easier, for she can feel herself utterly enclosed by them – and they love to cling to each other so dearly that they barely loosen their hold when Idril insinuates herself in the middle, soaking up the heat between the two beautiful men.

One night when it's been a particularly bad one, though, when her teeth are chattering loudly enough to have roused both her men by the time she awakens, Tuor takes both of them to the hearth and lights a candle – checking with sleepy, absurd tenderness that she might not be ill, like a mortal child with a fever. Voronwë is holding her up – faithful sailor, he supports her like she's drowning and he can be trusted not to let her take them both under.

The candle is pale blue, all a-ripple with the red of the devices of the king's house, and Idril watches it fascinated as she collects herself. She sees the droplet of mingled colors fall in amber-lit transluence from the side of the taper, though her head thumps back against Voronwë's clavicle when it drops on her skin just where shoulder becomes breast.

At once Tuor is all apologies, reaching with clumsy haste to brush the wax away, but she catches his hand and uses it to worm her way out of Voronwë's lap. It didn't hurt past the first instant – and how strange that this pain should excite her, that it should bring alive a pulse that drives all thoughts of issues related to her father clean from her consciousness. “Do it again,” she whispers.

Tuor is nothing if not obedient to her, but he needs two more urgings – and Voronwë's quiet assurance that the princess seems quite awake, and they should honor their lady's requests if they wish her to feel better – before he tremulously lets another drop fall. It hits the same breast, creating a companion to the first; he is holding the candle nearer now, and she hisses at the momentary puckering pain.

“It's hot,” she tells him, and her beloved, her dear bristly lovely man, understands.

At first his hand shakes, but he grows more confident as he carries on, holding the candle at an angle so the drops bead naturally, then descend to decorate the delicate rise of her belly, the half-globes of her breasts, the faultless silk of her upper arms. She gasps, at first, at the rhythmic flare of pain just at the surface of her skin; then the sounds deepen to moans.

When the row of slowly-falling drops comes to the join of her thighs, she cries out with a high peak, then spreads her legs and falls back upon her elbows on the hearthrug. Tuor and Voronwë gasp as one and meet each other's eyes; then Voronwë gets a second taper, and he lights it from the first, his slim hand and Tuor's broader, lightly-haired knuckles an inch from touching as both their eyes focus on the flames, the return to the lady beyond them.

When two drops hit one after the other on either side of the cleft of her sex, her world dissolves into sensation.

Idril feels like she's covered in sparks, those that spat and floated from the campfires of her childhood come alive to cling in her hair like a mantle of stars, to accompany her through ringing marble halls and cold, silent nights with a memory of family drawn close about the friendly flames. Voronwë bends close to let the wax trail hotter, perfectly outlining an aureole with a rapidly-hardening trace. Tuor raises his candle higher, focusing drops upon her sex so she's speckled from navel to upper thighs with stray wax.

Now she is not ice; she is electric, the sky's kiss to the earth, inviolable and beyond, without, above all question of cold or heat.

When Voronwë's hand comes to her, his index and smallest fingers part her the way she prefers, and the two middle fingers slip inside with no resistance in her arousal. Unerringly he finds the placement she likes, where the bases of his fingers work against her to let the pads graze the place inside where the soft, melting velvet of her walls hides an area of indescribable goodness, letting her feel full, full, perfectly full even though it is only two fingers that work her as her husband's candle lets its amber tear fall upon a pale nipple. She knows they worship her, these fair two with their heads bent in focus, bringing their candle-flames to celebrate her and to warm her with stars of liquid pain, and worshiped, she comes gloriously apart.

Tuor's head is soon beneath her shoulder. With the last of her strength she gives a slight, approving nod. This is what his shoulder is for. Yes. As Voronwë curls in behind her, she decides that is also what his body is for, and she feels delicious between them.

“I can bring you water to bathe, my lady,” offers Voronwë, ever attentive.

“No,” she murmurs, “let me stay sparkling; this made me warm again,” and she knows they both understand her.


End file.
